EA Sports College Football PS5 1

EA Sports College Football was announced all the way back in 2021, several years after the publisher’s last NCAA football game. But the project is taking its sweet time to be realised, and the last we heard it’s scheduled to release in 2024. Most recently, the Redwood Shores firm was accused of exploiting college football stars over low pay commitments, which would see athletes earn around $500 apiece.

CEO Andy Wilson admitted in a financial call overnight that licensing is somewhat of a bottleneck for the title, but the team has made “incredible progress” behind the scenes. “[The] gameplay is really coming together, and really capturing all the action of pageantry, and the difference in college football versus the NFL,” he beamed. “I feel really confident in what the team’s doing.”

He added: “We’re working through the licence situation broadly – as of now, we’ve got many if not most of the schools licensed as part of our licensing platform. We’ll continue to work with the various governing bodies of the sport in the country, and some key third-party partners we have, around how and when to include college athletes themselves into the game.”

Despite the hurdles, Wilson reiterated that he has full belief in the release. “I’m confident that this will be an incredible re-emergence of that college football experience [and] that it will capture all the action and pageantry, driven by the schools and all that goes on with the schools in the context of this game.”

Rather than simply be a reskinned Madden NFL, EA Sports has always been clear that its college football adaptation is being built from the ground-up, which will mean all-new systems and gameplay. For those of you who are tired of the action in the publisher’s flagship series, that’s potentially exciting news – we’re sceptical, however, that it’s going to hit its 2024 release date.

[source videogameschronicle.com]